The Set NYC

Yasumasa Morimura is one of my favorite artists. I haven’t heard about him for a while so I was very happy to see his work again. As you see, his works are funny and witty. He transformed his body to greatest artists and beyond. He could be anybody.

One of Japan’s most prolific and versatile contemporary artists, Yasumasa Morimura. Ego Obscura highlights Morimura’s 30-year-long project of excavating “the self” from layers of art history, Japanese postwar history, and personal history.

Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams at MoMA

African art, Art 2018, MoMA

MoMA had an exhibition, Bodys Isek Kingelez: City Dreams. I went to the museum to see other show but I went to a wrong floor and found this show. I was very lucky. I really got inspirational energy from Kingelez’s art work and his interview.

Based in then-Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), following its independence from Belgium, Kingelez made sculptures of imagined buildings and cities that reflected dreams for his country, his continent, and the world. Kingelez’s “extreme maquettes” offer fantastic, utopian models for a more harmonious society of the future.

Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil

Art, Brazilian Art, MoMA, Museum, painting, show and exhibition

Tarsila do Amaral. Abaporu. 1928

Tarsila do Amaral. A Cuca, 1924

Tarsila do Amaral. Carnival in Madureira. 1924

I went to Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil at MOMA. It was just as MOMA explained “a rare opportunity to explore the work of this daring modernist” for me. I felt Tarsila’s works were charming and they made me relaxed. Although she had professional education as an artist, her works look more like Naïve art than Modernism or Cubism art.

Tarsila do Amaral (1886–1973) is an Brazilian artist. She studied in Paris with André Lhote, Albert Gleizes, and Fernand Léger. The exhibition focuses on her pivotal production from the 1920s, when she navigated the art worlds of both São Paulo and Paris, and charts her involvement with an increasingly international artistic community, as well as her critical role in the emergence of modernism in Brazil.

Damien Hirst, Colour Space Paintings

Art, New York Art, painting, show and exhibition

Gagosian is showing British art star, Damien Hirst’s Colour Space Paintings, the first exhibition of the series in the United States, following their presentation earlier this year at Houghton Hall in England.

It was kind of fun to see all polka dots paintings. I like large ones. But I can’t stop to think of color blind test!

Robert Gober: Tick Tock

Art, drawing, New York Art, show and exhibition

Robert Gober exhibition at Matthew Marks gallery. This show is a collection of rather small pieces. I love Gober’s sensitivity. Specially those drawings. Beautiful.

Untitled
2017
Graphite and colored pencil on Vellum
12 x 9 inches; 31 x 23 cm

Plaster Heart on Fabric
1988-2017
Plaster, alkyd on cotton, acrylic
14 3/4 x 13 1/4 x 3 3/4 inches; 38 x 34 x 10 cm

Untitled
2000-2001
Wood, paint, concrete, cast plastic, human hair
Overall approximately: 80 x 48 x 72 in; 203 x 122 x 183 cm

Above ground approximately: 32 x 48 x 48 in; 81 x 122 x 122 cm

Below ground approximately: 48 x 48 x 72; 122 x 122 x 183 cm

Jeff Koons at Gagoshian

Art, New York Art, painting, sculpture, show and exhibition

I went to see one of the most popular artists, Jaff Koons exhibition, Easyfun-Ethereal at Gagosian. It was fun to see his painting at gallery setting. I mean his art work’s earthiness and NY Chelsea gallery’s earthiness are matching together.

Jeff Koons
Bluepoles, 2000
Oil on canvas
120 × 168 inches (304.8 × 426.7 cm)
© Jeff Koons

EnterJeff Koons
Lips, 2000 (detail)
Oil on canvas
120 × 168 inches (304.8 × 426.7 cm)
© Jeff Koons

Enter Jeff Koons
Woman Reclining, 2010–14
Granite, live flowering plants
84 × 88 1/2 × 46 1/4 inches (213.4 × 224.8 × 117.5 cm)
Edition of 3 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons

Photo by Tom Powel Imaging

Cy Twombly at Gagosian

Art, ART 21, drawing, painting, show and exhibition

Cy Twombly, Untitled, 2001, acrylic, wax crayon, and cut-and-pasted paper on paper, 48 7/8 × 39 inches (124 × 99 cm) © Cy Twombly Foundation. Photo by Rob McKeever

Cy Twombly
Untitled (In Beauty it is finished), 1983–2002 (detail)
Acrylic, wax crayon, pencil and pen on handmade paper in unbound handmade book, 36 pages
Each page: 22 3/8 × 15 3/4 inches (56.8 × 40 cm)
© Cy Twombly Foundation

“Cy Twombly: In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008”
Installation view at Gagosian West 21st Street, New York
Artworks © Cy Twombly Foundation
Photo by Rob McKeever

I went to Gagosian at 21^st street to see Cy Twombly In Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008.

The title of the show said Drawings. Before I went, I had wondered that most of his art works were looked like drawings. Then, what look like his “real” drawings?

The show was absolutely gorgeous. From the press release;

Throughout his career, Twombly sustained an active engagement with drawing, gesture, and making marks on paper. His urgent, meandering lines embody the intimate energies that carry over into his paintings, sculptures, and photography. Despite their enigmatic qualities, Twombly’s drawings are strikingly articulate in their rhythm, line, and allusions. At once economical and deeply sensual, they contain a timeless language, mediating between ancient and modern culture.

Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now)

Art, Museum, New York Art, show and exhibition

The Whistlers, Tip Toland, 2005

La Capresse des Colonies, Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier, 1861. Images courtesy of the Met Breuer.

Action 105: An Israeli soldier points his gun at the Palestinian youth asked to strip down as he stands at a military checkpoint along the separation barrier at the entrance of Bethlehem, March 2006, Reza Aramesh

I really enjoyed Like Life: Sculpture, Color, and the Body (1300–Now), a exhibition at the Met Breuer. They juxtaposed old and contemporary master works. We usually see art works based on time. Art has been developed Renaissance to modern and present. But this exhibition shows the viewers that old and present art works are resembled each other regardless of time.

Provocations: Anselm Kiefer at The Met Breuer

Art, drawing, European Art, German art, painting, show and exhibition

Winter Landscape, 1970 Anselm Kiefer

Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven, 1970 Anselm Kiefer

Bohemia Lies by the Sea, 1996 Anselm Kiefer

Yggdrasil, 1980 Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer was born 1945 in Donaueschingen, Baden-Württemburg, Germany, and raised in towns in the Black Forest region near the east bank of the Rhine.

Many of his works are inspired by Germany and its culture: German history, myth, literature, art history, music, philosophy, topography, architecture, and folk custom.

I love Anselm Kiefer’s works. I felt the dark deep side of human psycho. They are not only showing Germany’s post World War II darkness but also every human’s.

sachika Iwata Studio

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